The Smart Girl's Guide to Polyamory: Everything You Need to Know About Open Relationships, Non-Monogamy, and Alternative Love

It was with great trepidation that I started writing a book on polyamory specifically for women. Though I was raised by a strong, independent single woman, I resisted the label of capital-F feminist for so long. From what I saw growing up, feminists were ridiculed. They had so many important things to say about intersectionality, beauty standards, and centuries of oppression, but these opinions were often invalidated by the grossly distorted social caricature of what a feminist was—man-hating, picketing, bra-burning grumps out to ruin everyone’s fun. In my formative years, I wanted to speak up against these things, but I feared being stereotyped in the same way.

I was in a stage production of The Vagina Monologues during my sophomore year of college. Me, the theater arts major and therefore only real actor in the production, saddled with twenty women’s studies majors who were full of heart, passion, and spit, but who couldn’t vocally project to save their lives. As most of the group took up rehearsal time organizing next week’s Take Back the Night rally and discussing the situation in Darfur, I sat in the corner memorizing my lines and hoping the performance wouldn’t be too much of a train wreck to invite my theater professors. I couldn’t see the forest of feminist liberation for the trees of good presentation.

Humanism. That’s what I clung to. My investment in the value and shared plight of all human beings allowed me to wave the banner for equality and stick it to the man without having to get lumped into the angry feminist image that I so feared. I recognized the crushing weight of gender inequality, but I rallied for all human beings to have their rights recognized. Our cultural obsession with the differences between the genders was what was holding us back. A rising tide lifts all boats, after all, and everyone would benefit if we could just start focusing on the similarities between human beings rather than the disparities.

This is a philosophy that I hold to this day, particularly in my view of polyamory. Polyamory resonated so strongly with me because I perceived it to be equal-opportunity. It allowed for the recognition that all human beings want love, sex, attention, support, and community. In the world of polyamory, it wasn’t strange that I, a woman, wanted a variety of sexual partners with no desire for exclusivity (qualities normally attributed to men). It wasn’t strange for a woman to be the primary breadwinner while her romantic partners preferred to be at home. Gender roles were fluid and frequently turned upside down, and everyone involved aimed for equal access to partners, sex, support, and love.

I didn’t recognize it initially, but this falls in line with feminist thought. And like feminism itself, my choice to pursue polyamory has been met with all-too-familiar backlash. Women don’t want sex as much as men do. Polyamory will never work, because all women eventually want to settle down with a husband and kids. Women who have multiple partners just have unresolved father issues. While criticism of polyamorous men can be just as vitriolic, my years spent in this lifestyle have illuminated how cruel society can be to women who color outside the lines, especially when it comes to love, sex, and gender identity.

My journey into polyamory has not been easy or comfortable, but the rewards have been innumerable. All of the highs, lows, and wrong turns have been an intense education about myself—what makes me tick, what sets me off, what turns me on, and what truly brings me happiness. I have found the power to craft relationships that fulfill and energize, and I have discovered more love, security, affection, trust, and stability than ever before. Even though I and countless others have found the same satisfaction, non-monogamous women are still viewed as deviant, attention-seeking, slutty, or mentally ill. Old-school cultural opinions on female romantic conduct are not congruent with the polyamorous models of equality, honesty, and sex positivity.

These old opinions have infiltrated our movies, TV shows, books, and magazines. Girls are learning these traditional ideas about love and sex from the same places that teach them what kind of exercises to do to get a twenty-four-inch waist and which lip shade to buy that will inspire him to ask them to the prom. The disempowering pop culture of womanhood dictates not only how our bodies should look, but how our hearts should feel.

Without even realizing it, I have found myself facing a feminist issue point-blank, despite all of my years of resistance. My small contribution is to provide a source of relationship knowledge that is empowering and enlivening. This book is an alternative education in love, because for so long there have been so few alternatives that women can turn to. Regardless of whether a woman chooses a romantic life that is monogamous, polyamorous, or somewhere in between, I envision a world where that choice is well-informed, supported, and accepted.

I memorized my lines from The Vagina Monologues so well that I still remember them to this day, but to those twenty women’s studies majors who wasted valuable rehearsal time for the sake of bettering the world: you had the right idea.

What is love? What does it mean to be in a relationship? These are painfully cliché questions, but human beings have been trying to come up with a satisfactory answer for centuries. No one has been able to agree on a common definition yet, but as a result of all our trying we have a veritable cornucopia of definitions of love. They’re all over the movies—Love means never having to say you’re sorry. They’re in every song on the radio—Love is like oxygen. Love is a battlefield. Baby, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me no more. Go to a church service, and you’ll probably hear about it—Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast. Social psychologist Barbara Fredrickson came up with this analytical, yet thorough description:

Love is an interpersonally situated experience marked by momentary increases in shared positive emotions, biobehavioral synchrony, and mutual care, which, over time, builds embodied rapport, social bonds, and commitment.¹

This definition doesn’t make for great song lyrics.

So maybe we can’t all get on the same page, but we can all agree that love is some thing that is part of the human experience. Call it a feeling, an emotional sensation, a mind-set, a verb, a way of being, but whatever it is, we do know that it is. Which leads to the follow-up question, one that is probably the source of more anxiety, confusion, agony, and puzzlement than the original cliché question.

What do we do about it?

This is the face that has launched a thousand ships. There are innumerable books, advice columns, workshops, seminars, dating websites, therapists, and counselors, none of which would exist without countless human beings feeling stumped by that question.

I love this person …

But the sex isn’t good anymore.

But I’m attracted to someone else.

But my family doesn’t like her.

But I want to have kids and he doesn’t.

But I am also in love with three other people.

But she doesn’t make enough money.

But I still love my ex.

But I don’t want to get hurt.

But he doesn’t love me back.

What do I do?

Love, as much as it delights and intoxicates us, also sends us crashing into the depths of despair and sleepless nights. Solving the ubiquitous problems of love is the recurring theme of our soap operas and rom-coms. It keeps us running to the dating books and relationship professionals, seeking some logical, left-brained solution for our irrational, right-brained romantic turmoil.

But as a result of consistently puzzling over this paradox, we are bombarded on a daily basis by those who would give us the holy grail of relationship advice. The secret is to act like a lady, think like a man. Or maybe the key is to accept the fact that he’s just not that into you. There might be some value to be found in saving sex for marriage. Or wait … perhaps you just need to follow these ten steps to get your man to settle down.

Though the trials and tribulations of love seem to be universal, the solutions, advice, and quick-fixes found in trending Internet articles and on the magazine rack are definitely not. Women in particular are fed a one-size-fits-all script. You want to get married. You want to have babies. You want to lose weight. You want to look pretty. But the script ignores the stark truth that there is very little you can objectively claim that every woman wants. Not every woman is aiming to get married. Not every woman dreams of getting a guy to settle down. Not every woman believes in a soulmate. Not every woman wants to look like a woman. Not every woman is happy with the status quo of long-term monogamy.

That’s where this book comes in. Sorry to say, it does not contain all the answers about how to love, who to love, or what to do about it all. What it does provide is a glimpse into a world outside the status quo. Instead of telling you the rules about relationships, this book presents the notion of having agency and power when creating relationships. There is no one way it has to be. There is a choice. You don’t have to get married. You don’t have to stay single to protect your heart. You don’t have to have 2.5 kids. You can have ten. Or none. You can roll around on the floor of a swinger’s club with someone you just met. You can bring your girlfriend and your boyfriend home for Christmas.

If this is your first time picking up a book about polyamory, congratulations—but don’t get too excited. If non-monogamy intrigues you as an option for your life, the journey of discovery that you’re about to go on is not going to be easy and will be far from comfortable. The further you conceptually pull away from the cultural norms of monogamy and traditional marriage, the more important it will be to self-examine. You will be asking tough questions about what you really want out of your love life and how you want it to look, discovering how you genuinely function as a sexual being, uncovering your deepest desires, defense mechanisms, and motivations. And while the path to self-awareness and personal growth is typically riddled with embarrassing landmarks (your author has made more than a few humiliating mistakes), the best part is that it unlocks the freedom to unapologetically pursue what you want.

The most powerful way to use The Smart Girl’s Guide to Polyamory is to approach this book with your own life in mind. Make note of what you are drawn to and what you would want to make possible for your love life, as well as what turns you off or scares you. Be aware of thoughts and feelings, positive or negative, that arise as reactions to what you’re reading. It can be useful to keep a journal, especially for the personal exploration exercises. You may find much that surprises you about yourself, and you may be even more surprised to see your thoughts and feelings change over time.

Whether you’re a seasoned graduate, a timid freshman, or somewhere in between, you’ll learn how to discover and craft unique relationships that are healthy, happy, sexy, and tailor-made for you. No relationship book can give you the exact answer you need at any given time, but if you’re armed with a little advice and a lot of self-knowledge, this book can be an excellent road map for any romantic journey you choose to take.

The Women in This Book

This book would not be possible without the generosity of all of the women who were willing to tell the stories of their nontraditional lives. The women I interviewed for this book are from all walks of life—young, old, straight, gay, queer, asexual, and transgender. These women represent multiple countries, cultures, colors, and religions. The majority of these women come from Western cultures, though during the writing of this book I was in the midst of traveling through many non-Western countries and compiling information and interviews with non-monogamous women. That research will likely be the subject of another book.

The women in this book shared themselves with me fully, opened up about their most painful and vulnerable moments, and delighted me with their success stories. I sought to tell a story of women and polyamory that comes from many different viewpoints, some radically different from my own. I have employed pseudonyms and omitted some identifying details, unless the interviewee gave explicit permission otherwise. In the interest of avoiding tokenism, I have also refrained from including supplementary information about an interviewee’s age, race, sexual orientation, or gender identity unless she chose to specifically discuss these details within the context of the interview.

Much of this book is also inspired by my own years of personal experience with relationship experimentation, exploratory writing that I did for the blog at Multiamory.com, and the wealth of wisdom I’ve gained in my relationship coaching work. My clients also represent a vast diversity—pansexual, parents, swingers, singles, couples, triads, and more. Without getting too sentimental, every coaching session that I do is a blessing. The people who choose to work with me never fail to help me discover new insights for myself and my own relationships. Many of my clients have graciously agreed to have their stories shared within these pages.

Language Logistics

Though this book was written with the female experience in mind, I have tried to write inclusively rather than exclusively. You might be cis-gender or not. You might choose to present as femme or not. You might align yourself with any number of possible gender expressions in the vast and exquisite realm of identity. You might pick up this book with excitement because you personally identify as a smart girl. You might be hesitant because you identify as a girl, you just don’t have girl body parts. You may not identify as female, but the majority of your partners do, and you might be seeking to better understand their experience. Or you might be turning up your nose at the fact that I chose to use girl instead of woman. Rest assured that this book makes no assumptions about your age, sexuality, gender identity, or relationship landscape.

When I make reference to your partner, the term should be applied comprehensively to whichever interpersonal relationship the situation in context is most relevant to. Your partner may be a spouse, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a one-night stand, a person you only see twice a year, or the person you raise children with. In the interest of pulling away from couple-centrism, your partner does not by default refer to one person you hold more important than anyone else, nor does it imply that is how your relationship life should be structured. Your partner may be one of several partners you currently enjoy.

Lastly, you will find a glossary in the back of the book to clarify any terminology that may be new to you. This glossary is far from exhaustive but will include most of the specialized vocabulary used here.

The Journey Begins

I am far from being the world’s leading expert on polyamory or even human relationships. I’m still on that journey for myself. But my hope in this book is to empower you to become the expert on the subject of you, what you want, and what you love. By the time you finish this book, you may decide that your romantic journey will be polyamory, or it may be swinging, or it might even be consciously-chosen, long-term monogamy. But instead of looking outward to all those magazines, movies, and songs on the radio, you’ll be on the journey of looking inward to create your own definitions of love and crafting your own totally unique vision of a healthy, happy love life. You may not be able to answer the question What is love? but you will be able to answer the more important questions—"What is love … to me? What do I do about it?"

Section I

Polyamory 101

When I was a young adult and first started exploring romantic relationships, I didn’t put much thought into it. After all, a childhood of watching Disney movies and going to church every Sunday had taught me everything I needed to know about love and sex, or so I thought. You meet the boy, you fall deeply in love at first sight, you share true love’s first kiss (with maybe some stray birds or little woodland animals happily observing), and you dutifully save your virginity until your wedding night, at which point you consummate your union and spend the remainder of your lives in wedded bliss plus kids. Easy.

Imagine my sheer confusion when, after being with my very first boyfriend for a few months, I found myself developing a crush on another boy.

Something is wrong! I’m in love with my boyfriend; how could I be developing feelings for someone else? The Disney movies hadn’t covered this scenario. Once you fell in love with someone, that was it. Roll credits. You were so in love you didn’t even want to look at anybody else. I thought that I was broken. I ended the relationship with my first boyfriend and cut off contact with the guy I was crushing on, convinced that I was very seriously messed up to fall in love with more than one person.

The next few years of my adult life were a string of serial monogamous relationships. I followed a repeating pattern of falling in love, settling into the relationship, and then unexpectedly finding myself infatuated with someone who was not my boyfriend. Cheating was not on the menu for me, so one of two things would happen: I would suffer extreme guilt over what I thought was a sign of flagging personal integrity and fall into a depression, or I would abandon my current relationship in order to pursue a connection with my new fancy. It’s a pattern that is all too familiar to many people.

I was twenty-three when I finally grew sick of the cycle. Once again I had developed a crush on someone who wasn’t my boyfriend. I didn’t want to end the relationship. I didn’t want to cheat. I didn’t want to be miserable. So I did what was then unthinkable to me: I proposed opening the relationship.

Like many people, I thought that open relationships were only for commitment-phobes or sex addicts. But at this point of desperation, I started doing my research. Googling open relationship first exposed me to the word polyamory. I researched voraciously. It totally blew my mind that not only were there a lot of people doing this, they were doing it in a way that was viable, stable, and healthy. People were loving multiple people—and everyone was happy about it! So many assumptions that I had made about love, relationships, and even myself were turned upside down. It was confronting but exhilarating, and my stomach was both knotted up and full of butterflies when I finally pitched the idea to my boyfriend.

My first attempt went horribly.

I was a terrible communicator; he didn’t really want to be in an open relationship, and after some sloppy attempts at being polyamorous, our relationship came to a close six months later. But even when it was miserable, even when I was making one mistake after another, I still felt like I had uncovered something huge. My brain continued to burn, unable to forget everything I had learned. There was no way I could go back to the relationships I had before.

Several years later, I’ve now met multiple people who have experienced the same phenomenon. Learning about polyamory (or ethical non-monogamy or relationship anarchy or any of the many other manifestations of alternative relationships) is for many a radical awakening into a whole new paradigm. Like seeing the Matrix. Often there is no going back, which for some means a future of only polyamorous relationships and for others means a very clear decision to consciously embrace monogamy.

This new awareness surrounding relationships and sex need not be conflated with an intellectual enlightenment or spiritual awakening (though frequently it is). Becoming conscious of your relationships means also becoming conscious of your needs, your fears, your desires, what you want for your future, and ultimately what makes you tick and makes you you. Call it seeing the Matrix, call it enlightenment, call it turning over a new leaf. But whatever you call it, know that the things you learn in this book and the things you learn about yourself along the way are impossible to unlearn.

Before getting too lofty, first things first—education. Back when I was first awakened to the possibility of consciously crafting my relationships, I had to hunt through Google search results to find online forums, book suggestions, and random personal blog posts on polyamory buried in some corner of the Internet. Today, there is a wide variety of excellent informational resources on all different types of non-monogamy. This chapter will walk you through the fundamentals of polyamory in its myriad different forms, as well as address some common misconceptions that may arise about polyamory, women, and the nature of love itself.

What It Is

Ask any random person to define the word love, and you are guaranteed a unique and revealing answer. The same goes for the word polyamory. At its very simplest, it breaks down linguistically:

poly = many

amory = loves

This definition is simple, but even a description this reductive is controversial. (Mostly among linguaphiles, since the word commits the linguistic no-no of mixing Greek and Latin roots.)

But the devil is in the details. Many loves is broad and inclusive, and consequently polyamorous communities often debate what actually counts as having many loves. As more people become aware of alternatives to monogamy, more questions are arising. If you’re casually dating many partners but not planning on getting into any long-term relationships, does that count as polyamory? What about a couple who is emotionally monogamous, but sexually non-monogamous, such as swingers? If you had a threesome with your boyfriend once, but the two of you normally never have sex with anyone else, can you still label your relationship as monogamous? Is there a difference between being in an open relationship and self-identifying as polyamorous?

What’s in a Name?

Labels and definitions can be a double-edged sword. No one wants to be hedged in by a narrow, oversimplified categorization, but it’s also useful to have a go-to word that will quickly and easily identify yourself and your relationships. Alternative relationships are gaining visibility, which on the plus side means that people are now more likely to understand what you mean if you tell them, I’m polyamorous. On the other hand, this also means people are more likely to have preconceived notions of what polyamory or open relationship might mean. These ideas could be shaped by the media, their church, or whatever gossip they heard from their coworker. I’ve spent many years telling people that I’m polyamorous, but even that requires a follow-up conversation where I specify what that means to me and what that looks like in my life. Even if you decide to commit to polyamory, you will always have to clarify what it means to you, even to other poly folk.

In the 1940s and ’50s, Alfred Kinsey’s research shook up conventional ideas about sexuality with the introduction of the Kinsey scale. Kinsey posited that human beings, rather than being categorized as strictly heterosexual or homosexual, fell along a scale of sexual preference.¹ Today, the spectrum between heterosexual and homosexual has been populated by numerous terms: bisexual, heteroflexible, pan- or omnisexual, bi-curious, sexually fluid—the list goes on and on. In much the same way, the simple definition of many loves has been the subject of much fine tuning and tweaking to become more specific and serve a wide variety of relationship structures. New terms are rapidly being coined to support multiple flavors of relationship format and identity.

A collection of specific terms and unique relationship structures and practices will be covered later in the book, but here I want to introduce the three most commonly used and generally understood labels—non-monogamy, polyamory, and open relationship—and clarify the definitions that will be used for them from here on.

non-monogamy— any relationship structure that is not based on sexual or romantic exclusivity

I use non-monogamy as a wide umbrella term that includes every variety of polyamory, swinging, couples who are monogamish,² nonexclusive Dom/sub dynamics, etc.—any relationship structure that is not defined by sexual exclusivity to a single partner. Some people prefer to specifically say ethical or consensual non-monogamy to philosophically distance themselves from what may be the most culturally familiar yet morally questionable form of non-monogamy: cheating. Any reference to non-monogamy in this book is inclusive of ethical, consensual, and honest relationship structures. It is frustrating that there has yet to be a thorough term for these relationships other than pointing out what they are not.

polyamory—engaging in multiple romantic relationships simultaneously with full knowledge and consent of all partners involved

This is the basic meaning that will be used throughout this book, but keep in mind that within polyamory there are many gradients, which will be discussed in more detail. These multiple relationships may be short-term or long-term, deeply intimate or more casual, sexual or nonsexual. Frequently, a polyamorist may be in multiple relationships that represent a vast variety of relationship depth, format, attachment, and life entwinement.

open relationship—a dyadic (two-person) relationship wherein each partner is free to pursue other partners sexually or romantically

Including a definition for open relationship may seem repetitive. An open relationship is by definition non-monogamous and could also be polyamorous in nature. I include it here because I’ve found it to be the most accessible and frequently used term in Western culture. If someone has never heard of polyamory or ethical non-monogamy, chances are they are at least familiar with the concept of an open relationship. Often, couples who were previously in a monogamous, closed relationship will refer to their relationship as having opened up rather than as being polyamorous.

First Encounters

Most of us grow up learning that monogamy is the default for romantic relationships. It is modeled over and over again in most popular magazines, books, and movies, especially those that are marketed to young women and girls. For most people, our parents served as the most influential example of the potential effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of marriage and lifetime monogamy. In a culture that primarily presents monogamy as the only viable option for happy relationships, it is difficult to organically encounter examples of alternatives without specifically searching for them.

I got curious about women who chose to break away from established cultural norms and seek something different. How did they come across the possibility of polyamory? What opened them up to ethical non-monogamy? The wide range of first access points is surprising—from witnessing Islamic polygamy to encountering poly community members in an online game! Even in monogamous cultures, alternatives can show up in unexpected places.

" I have a friend of mine who tried to court me while I was in the infancy of my current relationship (three years in or so). He also had a girlfriend, and I would get mad at him because he would flirt with me knowing full well he was taken. He then explained to me what polyamory was and how his family was of that nature. His mom had a boyfriend; his dad had a girlfriend. His parents would often travel to visit their other significant others. Actually, his dad’s girlfriend lived with them after a while. It opened my eyes. It dawned on me that this is something that exists." —Anna

"I spent some time as a young woman (12–15) living in Pakistan, and one of the features of Islam is the ability to have multiple wives, provided each of the women you’re already married to agrees, and provided you can keep them equally. This is technically polygamy, but I remember at that age thinking that there wasn’t so much wrong with that because, compared to Mormon polygamy for example, there was no belief that a woman could only seek God through her husband. The element of consent really attracted me as well—I guess at that point I had a very live and let live mentality on the subject, but I still practiced monogamy in my own relationships." —Lila

"I first heard about polyamory when I was thirteen on an MTV show called Undressed. At the time, I was first recognizing my bisexuality (and first putting language to it) and knew that I couldn’t be fully satisfied with a partner of only one gender. As such, my first girlfriend and I decided that we would open our relationship so that